Masculine/feminine writing style

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Several years ago, there was a "thing" going round about our writing voices. There was even a test to take and I rated quite feminine in my speech patterns, and actually still have the list of feminine words, pasted on the side of my monitor, that women "supposedly" use. The whole shtik is that women's speech patterns are more tentative and colaborative.

I wonder if any of that makes sense now?

Gwen

Comments

Writing styles

Yeah, Gwen, it does. I have to find the article I read recently, but it said that many if not most writers have a feminine mindset. Supposedly, the "feminine" brain communicatres better. True or not, I'm gonna agree with it. That's my story, an' I'm a stickin' to it!

Wren

One Of My Friends Read My Autobiography

jengrl's picture

One of my friends read my life story once and she told me she could hear my voice in her head. She said it was totally feminine as she was reading. She told me that there was no doubt in her mind that it was written by a woman. It was like a validation of what I felt in my heart.

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Deborah Tannen

A Georgetown University linguistics professor by the name of Deborah Tannen has written several books that address the difference between the way men and women communicate. 'You Just Don't Understand' is an excellent book on the subject. It is well written and quite enlightening. Any one interested in the difference between speech patterns and how conversations between men and women use the same language should look into the books she wrote on the subject.

Nancy Cole

Note: I met Deborah and had a chance to chat with her years back. She is anything but a radical feminist. She rather quite normal considering she's a professor at Georgetown.

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~ ~ ~

"You may be what you resolve to be."

T.J. Jackson

Gwen, I would have to say

Gwen,
I would have to say that feminine vs masculine writing styles do exist, so yes your supposition makes definite sense. I used to get lots of comments regarding reports I wrote on various incidents that I investigated in my law enforcement days, as to why I wrote them as I did. I also seemed to be able to more fully understand my subordinate female officers more easily than my male officers, (had to generally ask them to explain what they meant) when I read their reports prior to passing them on to others. Along with that, papers and other written projects during my college days were often commented on regarding my writing style, yet I never understood why; until several years ago, when I took a writing test for a friend who was doing a gender studies program about this very issue. After the testing, I was surprised to discover that I rated really high in the female writing style. That seemed to explain what I had been experienceing all those previous years. I do believe this also explains why those who write the stories on BC-TS and other TG/TS oriented websites and those who read them seem to 'click' so easily. Our brains are apparently 'wired very similiar'. Jan

Astonishingly Male writing.

Several years ago, I took the test and it was solidly female writing.

It is disturbing to me to find that in my latest story, which I have hundreds of hours in, it is disappointingly male in style. True, it is my first excursion in to the War Story Genre, and I started it to see if I could write that way. I have finished the first chapter and the war phase and now it moves into time at home and then the romantic part. I wonder if that will affect my writing style?

Much peace

Gwen

Website to determine if your writing style is male or female.

RAMI

THe link below will take you to a website that will rate your writing as male or female.

I found it an interesting experience to take the stories I have posted here, and see how they were rated. I then played around with them, using the list of female words and male words to see if I could increase the female rating or conversely the male rating. Using such words did change the rating.

Rami

http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

RAMI

Let's have a go then...

The Genie: (51% Female)
Female Score: 984
Male Score: 940

Watery Grave: (53% Male)
Female Score: 14537
Male Score: 16559

Goodbye Sam: (62% Female)
Female Score: 1917
Male Score: 1151

Petra: (61% Female)
Female Score: 2787
Male Score: 1791

Petra (I Will Survive): (59% Female)
Female Score: 3462
Male Score: 2389

Petra (Lydia's Lament): (60% Female)
Female Score: 4942
Male Score: 3342

Reunion (V2): (58% Male)
Female Score: 600
Male Score: 831

Life Changing Experience: (51% Male)
Female Score: 758
Male Score: 796

-oOo-

Then again, would you really classify these words as masculine or feminine?

Feminine:
with, if, not, where, be, when, your, her, we, should, she, and, me, myself, hers, was

Masculine:
around, what, more, are, as, who, below, is, these, the, a, at, it, many, said, above

Following the links, apparently the following is what the algorithm is based on. See what you think...

Similarly, what the gender-identifying algorithm picks up on is that women are apparently far more likely than men to use personal pronouns -- ''I,'' ''you'' and ''she'' especially. Men, on the other hand, prefer so-called determiners -- ''a,'' ''the,'' ''that,'' ''these'' -- along with numbers and quantifiers like ''more'' and ''some.'' What this suggests, according to Moshe Koppel, an author of the Israeli project, is that women are more comfortable talking or thinking about people and relationships, while men prefer to contemplate things.

 

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